


I had a marvelous time ruining everything

by Metronomeblue



Category: Preacher (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Male Character, Blood Drinking, Cassidy-Centric, F/M, Human/Vampire Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Immortality, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, M/M, Mostly Canon Compliant, Multi, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Past Violence, Pining, Polyamory, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Requited Unrequited Love, Symbolism, Too Many Metaphors, Two of them!, addiction displacement, its been four years
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:47:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25546180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metronomeblue/pseuds/Metronomeblue
Summary: Cassidy wakes, the full moon laughing at him through the window. He feels old, too old for these bones and this body, too tired for this world that wants him gone. Too wasted for these wild, beautiful people whose brief lives will inevitably eclipse his eternity, who will leave him behind like the stars as they fade, one by one, until he’s alone in the darkness once more.——-Cassidy falls in love in Annville, twice over, and fails to run fast enough or far enough to stop it from happening.
Relationships: Proinsias Cassidy/Jesse Custer/Tulip O'Hare
Comments: 2
Kudos: 38





	I had a marvelous time ruining everything

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve just finished season two, so I have no clue what happens in seasons three and four, but I think I kept this enough in line with season one that it should be fine.
> 
> Cassidy/Jesse/Tulip Rights. I will die on this fucking hill.
> 
> Also yes the title is a Taylor Swift lyric, I’m sorry, it just fits okay. Felt good, felt organic.

There’s a howling loneliness in Cassidy, a roaring, starving child who never grew up and never gives up. He just screams. He just  _ wants _ . Cassidy put a door between them a long time ago, keeps that lock closed, the cracks boarded up, but something about this town… something about Jesse. It prickles under his skin like thorns, like Jesus’ bloody crown wrapped around his wrists and never coming off, like ravens tearing strips of skin away. Like armor coming off, doors coming down. 

He can’t stand it. It’s worse when he’s paying attention, worse when he lets it fill him up like sobriety and sorrow, so he chases any high he can find- attic insulation that burns in his lungs, all asbestos and lung cancer that’ll never catch up to him, cocktails of chemicals that no sane person would drink. The last of the drugs he scored off the “angels” in the motel. He’s been saving them, but “saving them” really just means waiting an extra day, for Cassidy. 

He can’t bear to be present.

The edges of scars on Jesse’s hands, the jut of bone in his wrist, the sun catching his black hair so it tilts deep, warm brown in the light. The sun on Jesse Custer’s face, warm on his back. What Cassidy wouldn’t give to set his hand there, what he wouldn’t give to feel the sun on Jesse’s lips, caught like confession between their mouths. The thought curdles cold in his chest, and he downs another generous swig of antifreeze and rubbing alcohol. He’s a sentimental bastard when he’s sober. He tries not to think of warm black fabric and warm brass-pale skin and warm lips and mouth and tongue and warm-

-so warm, so thick, like melted fat, bones snapping under his hands, wet all over his face, teeth bared like an animal, prey running, screaming, so loud with fear, men pissing themselves in fear, women moaning in shock with his mouth buried in their throats, red, red, red, until everything else faded away and no other color mattered, only the slick, hungry desire that rages in him, that whispers-

-blood.

Cassidy cuts it off. He stops thinking there. Wouldn’t do to indulge himself anymore than he has. Wouldn’t do. Wouldn’t do. 

He thinks Jesse would taste like whiskey and smoke, tar and burning sugar, bourbon vanilla and old oak. Honey and brown butter, wine and coffee. Something dark, something that looks tarnished until you hold it up to the sun and find it’s gold where the light shines through. Like the edge of summer where it becomes autumn, somewhere between August and November. Copper and gold and black. He thinks Jesse would taste like lust, like molasses and ginger, lazy and slow, quick to turn.

He thinks too much.

“Y’alright, Cass?” Cassidy slams his head on the pew, somehow, hurriedly sitting up and crossing his legs to disguise the glaringly obvious lump in his trousers.

“Just fine, padre! You?”

“‘M fine, yeah.” He isn’t though. He’s restless, tossing bits of paper around, opening and closing cabinets. He smells like Outside, dust and heat and sweat, other people and dry desert wind. It’s becoming familiar to Cassidy. He’s becoming familiar. More than a passing fancy, more than a passing friend. Cassidy wants to stay here, wants to be with him, wants to soothe the frustration and the feelings of failure from his shoulders, from his forehead, from his heart. 

Cassidy slinks back down in the pew, staring up at the dust dancing in the light, at the golden wood beams, the golden light he can’t touch for fear of burning.

He dreams of different summers than these.

* * *

Tulip comes into his life in the only way Tulip could ever have come into his life- by knocking him over flat and almost killing him. Women like Tulip didn’t leave you breathless- they left you lifeless. Cassidy appreciates that about her. It’s honest. It’s immovable. It’s the aftermath that makes him fall, though, that moment between her fury and her regret, when he sees her stark and radiant with recognition. She’s so beautiful, angry and apologetic both. 

He doesn’t mean to ask for the kiss. It just slips out, the same way his blood is slipping out of his body. Effortless, easy. Maybe a little slutty. He doesn’t expect her to say yes. Why would she? But she does, oh, she does, and she’s gentle with him even as there’s passion in every inch of her body. Looking into her lovely dark eyes, Cassidy can half-forget that he’s already in love. He can pretend this is a world where he can get what he wants. It’s not like Jesse would care, after all. Jesse doesn’t think of him like that, so who’s going to stand in his way? Who’s going to make him feel guilty?

Himself. Of course. 

Guilt for each of them, Jesse and Tulip, a rock and a hard place. 

It’s easier not to think of that, though, so he crawls to a rack of blood bags and makes light of it, and when she stares in horror at his bloody face, he pretends he’s not sabotaging this on purpose.  


* * *

She tells him about her boyfriend, and the way she clings to the word makes him smile bitter and forgiving, because she knows it’s a lie. She doesn’t want it to be, but she knows it is. So stubborn, so sweet, so fragile in her own, private way. She fucks him without looking at him, and he feels the burn of denied affection more keenly than he lets on. 

He tries to enjoy it. He even succeeds a little. 

She haunts him.  


* * *

He dreams it, sometimes, with the same kind of guilty, furtive desire that he dreams of Jesse, dreams that he’s kissing Tulip, that she’s holding his face between her bloody hands, that his face is buried in the curve of her beautiful throat-

She tastes like impossible things. Fireworks and lemonade and that tang of fake, perfect sugar on the outside of cereal. Where Cassidy dreams of Jesse in sunlight, Tulip is a bright-eyed shadow, cool and perfect in the deep blue night. Relief after burning, soothing cool after a long day cooped up in a too-hot box of a building. She tastes like freedom and moonshine, honeysuckle and sage leaves, whipped cream and graveyard dirt. Dew and gasoline, the heady almond of cyanide, grapefruit and the crisp, marshmallowy snap of magnolia petals between his teeth. Cassidy breathes in pure, bright color, life and light, and he looks down at her face wreathed in jasmine flowers and orange blossoms. Like some kind of trailer park saint, the Robin Hood of the deep southwest, and he loves her, he loves her, he loves her with all the broken glass and tender frailty in his heart, even as he knows she’ll never love him back.

Maybe that’s the real curse- not the immortality, not the bloodlust. The knowing.

Cassidy wakes, the full moon laughing at him through the window. He feels old, too old for these bones and this body, too tired for this world that wants him gone. Too wasted for these wild, beautiful people whose brief lives will inevitably eclipse his eternity, who will leave him behind like the stars as they fade, one by one, until he’s alone in the darkness once more.

He swipes a hand over his eyes. He can feel tears from ages past, even though his eyes are blissfully dry. He’s too old. Too tired. Too hungry. Neither of them wants him. Neither of them will, and god bless them for it. Too smart for that. Too smart by half.

He sleeps, and dreams of wanting what he can’t have.

* * *

The curtains aren’t supposed to be open. He keeps thinking it, a despairing refrain of Should Have Beens- shouldn't have been open. Shouldn’t have walked in without checking. Should have been more careful. He crawls out of the direct sun, but the burning, the flames, they don’t stop until he forces himself to roll over, smother them.

The sunlight cuts off, Jesse swearing as he closes the curtains and falls to his knees beside Cassidy’s smoking body.

Jesse’s eyes catch on the charred, raw flesh of Cassidy’s throat, too burned to bleed. “Do you need blood?” He asks, with the urgency of someone who knows violence and its aftermath. Cassidy can’t bring himself to speak, only nod, hissing at the jarring of his wounds.

Jesse helps Cassidy hobble to the kitchen, sets him in a chair. He rummages in a cabinet, cursing, takes down a water glass and yanks free a knife from the butcher’s block.

“Don’t-“ Cassidy says, because he tries, he tries, he fucking  _ tries _ to be a better person- but Jesse has the knife and a sure hand, and his blood spills like liquid ruby into the glass. Cassidy can’t even think about how stupid it is, Jesse’s precious blood in a fucking water glass that looks as pedestrian as asphalt. It should be in some silver goblet, a crystal wine glass, something sacred and fine, something fitting- but Jesse’s not that vain. Not that haughty. A water glass is what he’s got, and it’s easy to clean, so a water glass will do. It’s endearing, familiar. Jesse scrapes blood from each side of the knife on the edge of the glass, giving as much of himself as he possibly can. He mutters, annoyed, scrapes it again when a stubborn drop sticks. Cassidy watches with soft eyes and a hungry, thankful soul. He loves him. Cassidy’s heart cracks clean in two at the thought. He loves him. 

Fucking water glass.

“You gonna drink it, or-?” Jesse is looking at him, concerned, and Cassidy tries to restrain himself, tries to keep himself moving at a normal human pace. His hands shake, not with hesitation but with want, and he has to clamp down even harder, because he’ll never forgive himself if he spills Jesse’s blood, he’ll never forgive himself if he wastes something so rare, so freely given-

He was right. His chest hurts, he feels so full of a searing, painful kind of love, because he was right. Jesse’s blood tastes like honey and bourbon, vanilla and beer bottle glass and oak wood, molasses and church wine and desert dust- it tastes like Jesse. It tastes like sunlight. It doesn’t burn, but it  _ roasts _ , like a slow-moving heat from wood fire in winter, warms his cold dead fingertips and brings strange, human sweat to Cassidy’s back. Summer on the verge of autumn, like the first red of leaves in his mouth, the light through dead amber, the taste of apples and woodsmoke. 

He can feel his wounds closing, can feel the pain fading, the sensation narcotic, relieving. He can feel Jesse’s eyes on him, and Cassidy very purposefully doesn’t look up. He doesn’t need to see the disgust there, the tolerance. Or worst of all, fear. He’s too much of a coward to confront that.

“Have you been starving yourself?” Jesse asks softly, and Cassidy almost chokes. He lowers the glass, still a few mouthfuls left, and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, eyes now very much fixed on Jesse’s sad, soft face. 

“What?” Cassidy sputters intelligently. “Starving my-? Padre?”

“I’ve never seen you-“ he gestures at the water glass, and Cassidy’s eyes laser in, briefly, on the bandage he’s put on his wrist in the meantime, just barely covering the rich scent of summer. “Have you not been drinking blood?”

“I don’t- well, if we’re being honest, padre, I don’t  _ need _ it all the time. It’s like medicine, really. Fixes what’s broken, when I’m broken.” He tugs down his collar, shows Jesse the healed burns. “Some people get mighty reliant on it, same as any drug, but…” he trails off, swirling the dregs of Jesse’s blood in the glass. 

“But you drink rubbing alcohol and drain cleaner instead?” There’s a flat kind of amusement in Jesse’s voice, but there’s a new thread of understanding there. Cassidy doesn’t know how to feel about it, so he chooses to feel fine. 

“It doesn’t taste half bad when your taste buds work like mine,” Cassidy says defensively. 

“And how do I taste?” Jesse asks teasingly, leaning back on the counter. Cassidy’s eyes flick from his smile to his throat to the tilt of his hips then back to his eyes very, very quickly. He still thinks that Jesse saw. He wants to make a joke, to fling out some crack about how they’re not that intimate yet, but he can’t. 

“Holy,” he says, voice a low, rasping,  _ yearning _ plea that he can’t control. Jesse’s eyes turn to liquid whiskey, locked into Cassidy’s, and in the end Cassidy is the one who looks away first. He drinks what’s left, just restrains himself from licking the sides of the glass like an animal, just refrains from smashing it and licking it clean like some monster. 

Jesse takes the glass from him with gentle hands. They don’t talk about it.

* * *

He doesn’t see Tulip very often. She’s relentless, unstoppable, and he wouldn’t stop her if he could. Wreaking havoc, giving the world what-for, chasing down every last thread that even possibly led to what she wants- how could Cassidy judge that? He was half as brave and no better. He does see her again, though. He sees her slip into the church like she’s done it a thousand times, fearless, and hope sparks like a rotten car battery in his heart.

She’s neck-deep in the storage closet, putting away church wine and pamphlets, candles and plastic cups. There’s something curiously at-home about her, as if this is a place she’s used to, as if it’s a place she knows she belongs. He slips in behind her, smiling shyly.

“Couldn’t resist, eh?” She turns to look at him, confusion sinking into her face. “You just had to come back for more.” The tease, the joke, the wry sarcasm are heavy in his voice, but she doesn’t smile. His smile slowly drops.

“What are you doing here?” She demands, skipping past all pleasantries. Cassidy swallows, nervous.

“I work here,” he offers. She does not believe him. They measure each other with similarly narrowed eyes, equal confusion. “What are  _ you _ doing here?” She looks like she  _ belongs _ , like she knows her way around, and his mind rings an echo. She looks upset. She looks like she’s stuck, caught between a rock and a hard place, and Cassidy’s eyes close as the penny drops heavily. 

Jesse’s calling for her, Tulip, cause he knows her name. Cause he loves her. Cause she’s  _ his _ Tulip, branded into his back with jet ink and devotion. 

“You’re  _ his _ Tulip?” He asks, even though he already knows, voice low and soft with sad understanding. She tries to put on a brave face. Tries not to look ashamed or regretful. Or maybe that’s wishful thinking- it’s hard to tell sometimes. “Of course,” he murmurs to himself. “I should have known.” He can hear Jesse’s footsteps coming towards them, and he’s genuinely unsure which of them he’d be sadder to lose, more ashamed to disappoint- Tulip or Jesse, the brilliant moon or the burning sun. 

She pushes him back behind the door and a part of him is grateful. Part of him feels small and sad and broken open. 

Because it’s strange, hearing them interact, seeing what they’re like together. He can almost see it. He can almost touch it. Tulip is teasing, pressing him with the memory of love and laughter past, Jesse trying so hard not to give in even though Cassidy can feel the reluctant love pushing away at him. They’re so bright, so alive, and Jesse’s hand on her arm, pushing her gently out, is more familiar than any touch he’s ever given Cassidy. 

He feels alone, mostly, behind that door. He feels like he’s betrayed one of them- both of them. He feels like they’ve betrayed him. 

He feels like everyone’s second best, alone in the dark. 

He tries not to carry that resentment and hurt into the light.

* * *

The sun is bright out, and down in the nave of the church there’s a lot of yelling, and Cassidy stumbles down from the attic before he registers whose voices they are.

“Everything alright?” He asks Jesse, before he turns and sees Tulip. He freezes, too late for an out, too late for an excuse.

“Cassidy?” Tulip demands, and Jesse turns to look at him, half-guilt and half-confusion.

“Yeah,” Jesse says loudly. He shifts, crosses his arms. “How do you know Cassidy?”

“How do I-? How do  _ you _ know him?” They look increasingly confused. Cassidy wishes, vaguely, that he could disappear.

They look at each other from across the church, Cassidy peering nervously over Jesse’s shoulder, and he realizes, suddenly, that he is a secret. He’s a secret they’ve been keeping from each other, and neither was ready for the other to know. 

“So you know Cass,” Jesse says flatly, trying to seem unbothered even as his shoulders rise nervously. 

“Yeah, I know him.” Tulip says nothing more, jaw clenched. Their eyes are locked, their stances like those of duelists raising guns. Cassidy desperately wants to go back in time and pop out of the closet, to fake a first interaction with Tulip that wouldn’t have done this. That wouldn’t singlehandedly demolish the trust between the three of them. 

“Didn’t mention that,” Jesse mutters, turning just enough to catch Cassidy’s guilt over his shoulder, just enough to catch the soft, lovesick way he looks at Tulip. It’s just a shame he doesn’t see that Cassidy looks at him the same way. 

“I didn’t know that you-“ his voice dies in his throat, and he blinks. “Plenty of people in this town,” he says false-brightly, instead of finishing that thought. “Just lucky of me to find you two separately, eh?”

“Shut up, Cass,” Tulip snaps, eyes still fixed on Jesse. There’s something protective about it, like she’s trying to keep him from digging his own grave. It’s a little late, but he appreciates the thought. 

“Better me than you,” he says to her sheepishly, and Jesse does turn at that, suspicion turning to disbelief.

“What do you think I’m gonna do, Cassidy?” He looks mildly offended and very confused, and Cassidy wishes he was somewhere else. 

“Well, I’m not sure padre, but you could tell me to walk my sorry arse into the nearest ray of sunlight and we both know I wouldn’t have a chance of saying no.” Cassidy shrugs.

“I wouldn’t,” Jesse says softly, face creased with worry as much as annoyance, now. He presses a hand to his eyes, pained. “I wouldn’t.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Cassidy says, just as softly. “But I’m thinking you were considering it, and I’d rather you considered it towards me than her.”

“Shut up, Cassidy,” Tulip says again, but there’s a sort of embarrassed, bashful undertone to it that wasn’t there before. He catches her eye and she looks away immediately.

“I wouldn’t,” Jesse repeats, with force. “Not to either of you. Not for-“

“For what, Jesse?” Tulip asks harshly, and there’s a sound like thunder when Jesse laughs. He rubs at his eyes again, shaking his head.

“For screwing around?” He suggests, and Cassidy tries not to feel a sting of hurt at the casualness of the words. It wasn’t screwing around to him. It isn’t. Not with either of them.

“Weren’t screwing around,” Tulip says, crossing her arms. She’s still braced for a fight, still hard-eyed and frowning defiantly.

“Then what was it?” Jesse asks tiredly, and Cassidy feels so much more like an outsider with every second. 

“Doesn’t matter anymore, does it?” Cassidy asks, forcing a laugh. Tulip narrows her eyes at him. “Whatever it was, it’s over. You don’t have to worry about me, padre.” He doesn’t know he’s going to say it until he says it. “I’ll be leaving town soon, anyways.” Jesse’s eyes shutter, and Tulip scoffs, shaking her head. Cassidy has a feeling he’s done something wrong, really wrong, but fuck it. It’s too late to take it back. “Yeah, I’ll be leaving tomorrow,” he pulls out of his ass. “So the two of you can mend your little lover’s quarrel and forget all about me, ‘cause by tomorrow night this town’ll be all yours padre.” He grits his teeth and looks Jesse in the eye and pushes down grief. “So you take care of her.”

“Cassidy-“

“And as for you, sweetheart,” Cassidy says, turning to Tulip with a forced cheeriness and a fondness that fills his heart. “I wish you all the luck in the world with your no-good boyfriend.” He can see her anger fade, and he smiles true. “You take care of him, too. He sounds like a right idiot.”

“He is,” Tulip says, and Cassidy could half swear she was sad to see him go. 

Neither of them stops him as he walks to the attic to pack up his things, and he tries not to be sad about it.

* * *

He leaves just after sunset, when there’s still blue at the rim of the sky, and the air smells like lightning. Annville has a shitty few railroad staff, and train tickets don’t exist, but he pays off a freight assistant with a worn twenty and a promise he won’t get caught in the boxcar. 

Jesse and Tulip swing the doors open before the train leaves. There’s something distinctly criminal about the manner in which they do it, like they’ve got long experience breaking into freight cars, but, shit, they  _ came _ . For him. It’s not a meadow run, but Cassidy is blown enough by the realization that they care at all that he can’t complain. Even if they only came to say goodbye, even if they came to say he can leave- they came. They’re just silhouettes under a streetlight, but he knows them like a raven knows faces, like the void knows the stars, like the rain knows the earth. Collision, orbit, love letters from a knife to a scar. 

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Tulip asks, pissed as hell and not afraid to show it.

“Dunno, really,” Cassidy shrugs, cracking half a smile. “Was thinking maybe Austin? Austin’s a place, right?”

“Only technically,” Jesse shrugs, fingers shifting on the crowbar he’s got perched on his shoulder. “You didn’t say goodbye.”

“Didn’t think you’d want me to,” Cassidy lets the sunglasses hide his face. He’s so far into shadow that he hopes it works.

“You’re leaving ‘cause of us?” Jesse asks. Cassidy looks away.

“Well.”

“Don’t.” Tulip makes it sound like an order and a plea all at once. “We- please stay.”

“You said please,” Jesse remarks, eyeing her. She glares at him.

“I’m polite.”

“Uh-huh.” She elbows him in the side. Cassidy wants to smile. He wants so badly to smile. But he feels… so far away from them. 

“You want me to stay?” They look back up at him, and he can see the curves, the planes of their faces just slightly under the stark orange glow.

“Of course,” Jesse says, stepping up into the freight car. Tulip follows, hopping up and moving further in to kneel next to Cassidy. 

“I don’t-“ he looks down. “You know what I am, padre. You know, Tulip.” There’s something agonized in the way he says it, and they both look… so fucking sad. 

“You’re Cassidy,” Jesse says simply.

“You’re our friend.” Tulip takes his hand, Jesse refuses to look away from him, and Cassidy feels pinned like a butterfly, the sewer rat he is beneath two fierce birds of prey. 

“Is that what I am?” 

“Sorry for putting you in the middle of things,” Tulip whispers, and kisses him. Just briefly, cool and soft like torn rose petals. 

“Oh, I don’t know,” he says, grinning. “I think I quite like being in the middle of things. 

“If you stay, will you be safe?” Jesse asks roughly, and Cassidy nods, hoping against hope that he’s telling the truth. He doesn’t know, really. He never does. He’s been real quiet so far, though, and with friends- lovers- he’ll be better. But his safety isn’t the only concern anymore.

“Will you?” He asks, and Jesse’s eyes close in a tired kind of love.

“This isn’t about us,” Tulip whispers into his lips, and even as she pulls away, he follows, gently. 

“There’s nothing in my world that isn’t about you anymore,” Cassidy admits, in a whisper that must reach Jesse, too, because there’s a noise of protesting behind him. “Both of you,” he says, refusing to look away. “I love you.” Jesse’s hand lands on the back of his neck, and even as he looks up Jesse sinks down beside Tulip, pulling Cassidy into a quick, deep kiss that leaves him lost.

“You’re a good man, Cass,” Jesse says hoarsely. 

Cassidy smiles bitterly, earnestly. “I’m really not, padre.” And then he kisses Jesse again, longer, sharper. Hungrier. He can feel one of Tulip’s hands curling in his hair, can feel her lips against his brow, tender and a strange kind of grateful.

He has everything. He has everything. He’s the luckiest man in the world.

He doesn’t even have the decency to deserve it.

He sleeps the night through, Jesse’s body warm and solid against his back, Tulip’s hand reaching across Jesse’s side to tangle with Cassidy’s. It’s messy, and he’ll be sweating through his shirt by morning, and his hand will be all cramped, but it’s worth it. It’s all worth it. To feel Jesse’s face pressed to the back of his neck, to hear Tulip’s light, rabbit-fast breathing in the stillness of the dark. Cassidy would die a hundred times for this. 

The moon shines through a crack in the curtains, and Cassidy looks at its shining face. It doesn’t laugh at him. It just beams down, violet-blue-white where the shadows mar it’s surface. 

“I win,” he whispers. 

* * *

He wakes to warmth, to love.

He wakes to amber sunlight and Tulip’s face pressed to his chest. Jesse is gone, but Cassidy can just hear his heartbeat, can just smell the bourbon-oak-honey of him trailing out the door of his room. He tries to extricate himself from Tulip’s grasp, but instead she wakes slowly, blinking lazily up at him.

“You’re not going to try and leave again, are you?” She asks, voice rough with sleep.

“No,” he says softly. His hands rub up and down her back, absentminded and soothing. “No, I’m staying. Long as you want me to.” He catches her eye and flashes a weak grin. “Can’t get rid of me.”

“Good,” Tulip says, with the same kind of cross fondness. Her fingers dig into his back, curling in his shirt. “Jesse and I- we aren’t. We aren’t real good at keeping people around. Only reason we’ve lasted so long is cause we’re both so fucking stubborn. And I don’t-“ she swallows, frowns. “I don’t wanna get rid of you.”

“I’m glad, love,” he smiles for real this time. “Cause I don’t wanna go.”

They get up together, ruffled and still wiping the sleep from their eyes, and find Jesse in the kitchen making the ugliest pancakes in the world.

“Oh, no no no no,” Tulip said, immediately taking the spatula from his hand. “You give me those m&ms and you sit the hell down before you ruin everything.”

“I was just trying to-“

“You can’t cook, Jess,” Cassidy agrees, shuffling in next to Tulip to examine the pile of torn pancakes. “You’re hopeless, actually, Jesus.”

“What, and you can?” Jesse laughs, accepting their dismissal, stepping back.

“Oh, I’ve had a hundred and nineteen years to learn, padre, I think you’ll find I’m quite good.” He dropped a pancake and quickly scraped it off the floor. “Comparatively, at least.”

“I look forward to seeing it,” Jesse drawls, settling into one of the kitchen chairs with a wide, slow smile and a kind of lightness that Cassidy hasn’t truly seen from him before.

“Yeah, well, you’re gonna.” Tulip rolls her eyes and cracks an m&m between her teeth. 

“Not this morning, he ain’t.”

“No,” Cassidy smiles, presses a fond and hesitant kiss to her cheek, as if he’s unsure he’s allowed to. “Not today.” Tulip leans into it, half-smiling.

“How come I don’t get a kiss,” Jesse complains, and Cassidy turns to see those molten dark eyes smiling up at him. 

“Well, all you had to do was ask, love.” Cassidy obliges, leaning forward, resting one hand on Jesse’s shoulder, lingering on his black shirt, feeling the way the other man rises to meet him.

He’s happy. God forgive him, he’s happy.

* * *

They’ll die, one day. His brilliant, wild lovers will eclipse eternity and fade away like smoke into summer or oil into the ocean. He doesn’t think he’ll see them when he’s done- whatever heaven Jesse is going to- and by hell or by heaven he hopes Tulip goes too- he has a feeling he won’t make it up there. They’ll leave him, as so many others have, and for the first time, Cassidy thinks, running his fingers through Jesse’s hair, looking at the solemn, tranquil curve of Tulip’s closed eyes, for the first time he’ll follow. He won’t bother staying. All he’d do was fail them. Sink into blood and sex and drugs that would never fill the hole in him, indulge until the only things that made him feel were too vile to be worth feeling, but he’d chase them anyway. All he’d do was become a monster. 

So he’ll go, too. Burn away like mist in the sun, like film in fire.

He’ll go, too, and think of them fondly from hell.

“Y’alright, Cass?” Jesse murmurs, soft as a velvet tiger under Cassidy’s touch.

“Just fine, padre,” he whispers back. 

The sun rises. It always does.

**Author's Note:**

> Anyway I’m soft for Them


End file.
